Best-Selling Author & Business Strategist | MacGyver

Creative Director | Artist  Outdoors 

16 | Soccer Player | Music | “The Office”

“Hanavave” is a 2002 Catamaran Athena 38 Fountaine Pajot. Hanavave is the name of a very picturesque bay in the Marquesas, an island group located in French Polynesia, about 760 nautical miles northeast of Tahiti. We bought Hanavave from Frank, a nice German man who had sailed her from Germany to Tahiti with the goal of reaching Australia, but his voyage got cut short by COVID and its subsequent travel restrictions and port closures. Prior to that, Hanavave was a charter boat in Croatia for 15 years.

We bought the boat remotely, sight unseen, which means that there were a few surprises that Grant and Jack uncovered upon their arrival. Because Frank had been stuck in Tahiti for quite a while, there was a lot of deferred maintenance on the boat.

Grant has repaired or replaced the main sail, the bimini window and walk boards, the lazy bag rigging, the main sail pulley, the wind turbine system, the alternators and battery charge controller, the emergency hatch in the port head, put in new drive belts, new bed mattresses in all four cabins, repaired the saloon cushions, the oven, and we pulled the boat out of the water to put on new propeller drive seals and to clean, sand and apply new antifouling paint. Grant installed fans and new LED lights in all cabins, built a new table for the rear deck and repaired the trampoline, many of the 12-volt charging ports and installed an inverter.

We’ve also removed many dinghy loads of excess gear and items that we will not need and have cleaned the boat thoroughly, both inside and out.

Hanavave has 4 double cabins and 2 heads with showers. She is powered by solar and wind and has 2 180-liter water tanks. This makes for a lifestyle that has to be very mindful of power and water usage: we “shower” by swimming in the ocean on most days and about once a week we shower on shore in the marina facilities. We wash our dishes in the ocean, we re-wear our clothes and wash them in the marina laundromat, and have to make sure we don’t use too much electricity on sunless or windless days. There is no air conditioning or a freezer on the boat and we also have to be very mindful of the amount of trash we produce.

While they are a big adjustment, we welcome these challenges as we acknowledge that our usual way of living contributes greatly to the green house effect and we want to gain a better understanding around our energy consumption and pollution output in order to live more sustainably going forward.